Little devices such as thumb drives, a.k.a. flash drives, and memory cards are really starting to hold a lot of storage nowadays. It’s common to find a thumb drive that will hold up to 64GB and higher. That can usually hold someone’s full photo library and documents. Memory cards may typically get up to 32GB and up. That’s equivalent to 32,000 precious family photos.
It’s inevitable that these little devices will fail one day. It’s not a matter of if, but just a matter of when. Yes, you should always back up your files, but if you didn’t get a chance to when your thumb drive or memory card crashes, you’re looking at data recovery.
Thumb drive data recovery and memory card data recovery can be very expensive. So, I recommend trying some good software data recovery utilities first.
Here are my top three data recovery software applications to use on thumb drives and memory cards:
- PhotoRec – Here’s the clear winner for recovering memory cards and thumb drives. It recovers lots of devices and doesn’t matter if it’s mounted or has a drive letter. It is Mac supported as well as Windows and Linux compatible. The interface is a bit DOS-like, but this is the most powerful media recovery software available. And it’s free!
- CardRecovery – This is the best data recovery software for camera memory cards. This $40 software recovers: jpg, image files, avi, mpg, mov, cr2, mp3, and wav files. You can trial it first to see what files it can recover, but you pay. It is only Windows support compatible.
- Remo Recover – Media Edition – At $49, this edition is focused on recovering raw format photos. This means that if the files are damaged and beyond any way to decipher the format, it will still recover the file in a raw or untitled file. It’s a solid recovery tool and shouldn’t be overlooked. This version is available for Windows and Mac.
If the data recovery software doesn’t work, you should then bring your media to an NYC data recovery company that will probably have to perform NYC lab recovery.